Friday, February 28, 2014

I gave it a rest, took a step back to get a better vantage
point. It didn’t help. I know this much. Writing is therapeutic. I suffer without the illusion of putting the world in order.

We saw a one-man performance of three Samuel Beckett works.
Barry McGovern was superb; words poured out of him at the speed of our mind’s
gibberish, stinging and tickling, at once.
I can’t go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on. Nobody I know captures the
absurdity of existence as well as Beckett. Mortality hangs overhead yet we go
on with a torrent of words let loose as
if from a broken spigot, hunting, grasping for some measure of meaning or control
of it all, as though….

If I were the last one standing to greet the visiting aliens
they might wonder why they went to all that trouble. I haven’t the vaguest idea how anything works
in this clutter of things. Not this computer I’m typing on or the bulb in my
lamp or the TV, telephone, car, even how my clothes came to be. The only technology
I might explain is an ice cube tray……but then again I don’t know what makes a
refrigerator refrigerate.

So I witness the passing parade as if some clues might
appear to my inner Sherlock in this era of connectivity. Two T.V. shows, House of Cards and Downton Abbey, have found their audience and I find myself looking
for a common denominator. In a word it is, Control.
One mirrors the slime of Washington D.C. ratcheted up a notch perhaps…or maybe
not. The other transports us to those years when the last gasp can be heard of
the British manor house, with its order and civility in which everyone knew his
place.

Machiavellian ambition, however treacherous, seemed easier
to take with a British accent. Peggy enjoyed Ian Richardson’s nefarious climb
up the ladder but has trouble watching it Americanized in the hands of Kevin
Spacey. Like it or not we find ourselves identifying with Francis Urquardt, now
Underwood, in his calculated rise to the top of the heap. Adrift as we are in
this sea of flotsam I suspect we can’t resist clinging on to anyone who pulls
the puppet strings. He navigates deftly through the maze. Never mind his
deceit, disregard for human life or indifference to values. He is the ultimate
pragmatist. Obama, he's not. He leverages like LBJ, charms like FDR, plots like
Dick Cheney. Politics is chess and he’s four moves ahead on the board. If he
has sinned (and he has) and dies (as he must) trying to grab the reins, he has
died for us, the congregation of the lost. A sacrificial offering who gave us a
few dozen hours of a fabled climb up the beanstalk.

As opposed to this downtown alley we can always escape into
Downton Abbey where the rituals and traditions, however anachronistic, are
rigidly maintained. After all, one can’t expect the lord of the manor to put on
his own pajamas. The place reeks of order and we love this tidy world. Of
course melodrama is made of sterner stuff and there is no shortage of scandal
and misdeeds to put to rights. The nobility of upstairs is matched by the
hierarchy of downstairs. The butlers know when to become invisible. The titled
class observes what is bred in the bone except for minor transgressions which
can be remedied. The operative word is still, Control. We can’t get enough
of that wonderful stuff.

Beckett’s characters are closer to the authentic self. But
who wants to think about that? Better to live through our small screen plotters
and players of a bygone time with a few hours of imagined control over this
fractured and mysterious life.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Back in the day I had my heroes. There was the Man of Steel
who leaped tall buildings and then returned to his bespectacled life. Then
there was Elizabeth Cady Stanton or Florence Chadwick who swam the Channel both ways. I
also idolized Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax.

All of them acted as singular individuals taking matters
into their own hands and pushing the margins of what was thought possible. They embodied the American Dream. Heroes and
heroines must have an adversary. Athletes have the record book. The
Suffragettes and minorities have the weight of social mores. Superman had
gravity, itself.

With some sophistication and a broader view of the human
psyche came the anti-hero. We took our heroes down from the pedestal for closer
inspection and maybe recognized ourselves….on a good day. Over the years the
anti-hero became more and more blemished. Redemption was hard-edged, hard-earned
or hardly worth the time.

All of which leads me to our latest version in the virtuoso
performance by Matthew McConoughey in, Dallas
Buyer’s Club. Here we have a poster-boy for the guy you wouldn't want your sister to marry...a red-neck, womanizer, misogynist, homophobic Aids
victim whom we are asked to cheer because he single-handedly defies the Food
& Drug Administration and by extension, the government, Big Pharma and Science itself.

I have no use for pharmaceutical companies but in our system
they are the arm of research, manufacture and marketing. I do not condone their
abusive practices or exorbitant profits. However this film takes down
evidence-based science and a vital federal agency along with it.

In its place we are asked to support renegade science based
on anecdote and driven by loopholes and a good-old American entrepreneurial
device for personal gain. This script could have been written by Ted Cruz from the Libertarian handbook.

First we are told that the FDA is the villain for
withholding AZT from the market. Then the drug is deemed to be toxic when it is
released. In fact it was made available quicker than other drug in history
because of the AIDS epidemic in the late 80s. And why was it delayed at all?
Because clinical trials first had to be made to evaluate benefits against risks.
And why were their deaths associated with it in the early days? Because the optimum
dosage had yet to be established. In fact AZT has become part of the cocktail
successfully treating millions of AIDS victims for the past twenty years.

Vigilante justice is a running theme in Hollywood. The
sheriff in High Noon became the Clint
Eastwood revenge-seeker. We love our protagonist to break out of the herd,
bring down the authorities and make his own rules. Now the cowboy has put on a
white coat and become a doctor scheming to circumvent rational medicine. And he
even get his woman in the last reel.

Friday, February 14, 2014

Even if you forgot the question. Not for cynics who avoid
the word and sentiment, those who can’t get past the commercialism of the day,
who scoff at flowers, candy and Hallmark cards. Get over it. It’s far too easy.

Phooey on them. Why not celebrate, embrace those in your
life….life itself? Today is a reminder to express the most important feeling we
can offer. Better yet to live the love daily, beyond the words which have been
degraded by overuse. As Shakespeare almost said, The quality of loving is twice blessed….to him that gives and to him
that receives.

Maybe it all starts with forgiving yourself..........for the blurt that came out of your mouth you want back or the words you didn't say but should have or the library book you lost but then found looking for your lost keys or the cup you chipped and the sock that got away in the last laundry.

Love is a large word. It can be Putin believing in his
manhood enough to keep his shirt on. It might be Ruhani trusting Israel and
Netanyahu returning the trust to Ruhani. Maybe even the Repugnants finding a
smidge of humanity in their hearts or John Boehner loving himself enough to
stay away from the tanning parlor. The U.S.
Olympic team loving their sport more than the medals. It might be forgiveness
for that guy who got in front of you at the check stand or even the Donald
Trumps of the world who are to be pitied for the hatred that poisons their mind and impoverishes their souls.

So this evening Peggy and I go out to a candle-lit table,
toast our good fortune, family and friends and exchange poems. To be met, heard and seen, fully
received. I know of nothing worth doing more than this.

Sunday, February 9, 2014

Imagine whizzing down your favorite icy freeway at 80 mph
with speed bumps and mandatory lane changes. Don’t try it without a note from
your mother. You must have bravado, strength, agility and a touch of
self-destructiveness. I shall never understand the impulse to stare down death
to feel alive, or more alive than the rest of us mere mortals. So it goes with
giant slaloms and moguls.

Is it Mt. Olympus they are racing down after consorting with
the gods? Maybe they pass Sisyphus on his way up. It looks life and death to
me but not to Norwegians or Alpine skiers who probably regard the steepest
slope as little more than a hill of beans.

As for the Lutz it
involves reaching back, vaulting and rotating but on the outside rather than
inside of the skate. A trained eye is alert to a mere flip which cheats by
turning on the inside of the skate. This has become known as the Flutz. I now know more than I did twelve
seconds ago.

Being a world-class Klutz I can’t imagine a Lutz. But I
honor and respect all the athletes from 80 countries. Every one of them doing
things I’ve never tried from skiers to skaters to sledders….even the three-time
lugers who give mortality the finger at 96 mph.

The winter Olympics is both a coming together and a coming
apart; a gathering of nations with good will and friendship and a fierce
exercise in nationalism. Better to compete than blow each other up.

The opening ceremony was both buoyant and flamboyant.
(Ras)Putin strutted his stuff with a pageant of Russian history and cultural
heritage. We got the white-washed Disneyfied version minus serfs, pogroms, purges, gulags,
Stalin or Lenin but that's all right. We couldn’t expect any better from the
Texas school board’s redacted version of American history. Putin was hardly
recognizable with his shirt on. I almost expected him to jump out of the stands
bare-chested and wrestle a Siberian tiger. In fact earlier in the week he was
photographed cradling a leopard.

Aside from power on display we were treated to references
from the Russian pen of Pushkin the playwrights and novelists. It was topped
off by ballet dancers choreographed with artistry and technological brilliance.

From where I sit transfixed on the couch watching the human body extend
itself twisting, speeding, soaring beyond the imaginable everyone looks like a perfect ten. I don't want to hear about the ice dancer who performed with grace and verve but her twizzle fizzled while I'm still having my razzle dazzled.

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Super Bowl Sunday is America’s highest holiday. It noses out
Jesus’ birthday and resurrection. It dwarfs all the presidents and M.L. King. It rivals Black Friday which now occurs on Thursday night. It far exceeds any
other event of the year based upon T.V. viewing audience (approximately 115
million). S.B.S. bails out every pizza joint, salvages the avocado crop and
probably moves pre-diabetics into the full-fledged category. We don’t mute the
commercials which cost 4 million bucks for half a minute. We eat. We bond. We buy and we bet. What can be more American?

I bet my friend Ralph $50,000 that Seattle would beat
Denver. With the score 22-0 at halftime I told him I’d settle for $25,000 if he
paid me now. He then haggled me down to $14,000 for paying cash. We agreed so
now I am going to receive $1 dollar a year for the next 14,000 years.

Super Bowl Sunday brings out the glutton in us. We gobble
with imagined impunity. Any New Year’s resolution we may have made about good
nutrition is set aside which is why the event is held so early in the year. Carrot
juice and celery sticks are not part of the ritual. We’re talking beer and
munchies.

Certain vexing questions are answered this day such as how
to eat pizza properly. Those with a college degree and library card eat
with a knife and fork while the rest of us pick up a slice, fold it in
half, drip a little and it disappears in that orifice below the nose. Since
Obama took office and compromise is in the air I understand that the acceptable way is now to start off with utensils in hand and then revert to
Neanderthal mode.

The game itself is just something to do while we’re eating.
However some men slip into their game-face with paint and fangs. Hormones are
tweaked. They growl and sneer at the mercy of their glands particularly if they’ve
joined the office pool which can be for total points, number of touchdowns and
just about any statistic.

I wonder if Romans got so worked up going to the Coliseum to
watch the lions. Sunday’s game was between seahawks and broncos. The
four-legged creatures did stand a chance.

Football is a sure sign of American exceptionalism. The rest
of world plays and watches soccer and the players don’t end up with nearly as
many concussions, stitches, fractures and neurological damage. We alone breed
300 pound plus Goliaths. We love to watch controlled violence just as long as
the gladiators turn off the spigot a few seconds after the clocks runs down.
Swagger is fine between the lines where Trash is the first language. We pretend
it’s all about humility, sportsmanship and Aw Shucks. For us on the couch it’s
a spectacle, pass the guacamole. For the players it’s a grunt & grind, show
me the money and show me the way to get home without crutches.